Tuesday, 29 November 2016

Keith McMillen Instruments innovative K-Board Pro 4 controller

KMI kickstarts cutting-edge, MPE-compatible keyboard controller capitalisation with Kickstarter campaign
“The K-Board Pro 4 is really musical because it’s the only MPE controller that you can just play like a keyboard that
has a definite attack but also has all of the continuous dimensions.”
- Jaron Lanier, 2016
Innovative hardware and software developer Keith McMillen Instruments is inviting
capital investment for its innovative K-Board Pro 4 — a four-octave MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital
Interface) keyboard controller that is MPE (Multidimensional Polyphonic Expression) compatible with multiple
dimensions of touch sensitivity in each key, and a duly desirable device which will be the next product to
come out of KMI Labs (https://www.keithmcmillen.com/labs/), the R&D (Research and Development)
division of Keith McMillen Instruments, further forging the appeal of the cutting-edge company — courtesy
of a Kickstarter campaign kicking off.

K-Board Pro 4 is a new kind of keyboard controller that feels and responds like a musical instrument — with all the nuance and sensitivity
that makes an instrument musical. Marketing-speak notwithstanding, who better, then, to put the cutting-edge, MPE-compatible K-Board
Pro 4’s raison d'être into even wiser words than Keith McMillen Instruments’ namesake Founder & CEO Keith McMillen, an acclaimed audio
and music technology innovator of some 30 years standing? Says the man himself: “We wanted to reclaim all of the powerful synth
parameters that you can rarely access in performance and put them under your fingertips where you can play the heck out of them! Start
with the familiarity of the classic keyboard and make it more responsive to take advantage of multidimensional expressivity.”
Enter K-Board Pro 4...
thanks to its familiar keyboard layout, players can seamlessly
transition from a traditional piano performance to a
brave new MPE world — without changing their natural technique, but with
the added ability to take total control over the character of their
sound while playing. More meaningfully, MPE is the new standard for
advanced expressive instruments. It’s a new way for electronic music
controllers like K-Board Pro 4 to
communicate with favourite hardware classics and cutting-edge soft
synths. ‘Speaking’ MPE is becoming
more commonplace amongst more modern synthesizers, so realtime
plug-and-play access to control over sounds is perfectly possible — in
the right hands. However, in-demand, innovative instruments from the
likes of ROLI (Seaboard) and Roger Linn (Linnstrument) use MPE to
allow for the type of expressive control that previous-generation
controllers could only deliver with complicated mappings and middleware.
Moving MPE onwards and upwards, under each key of K-Board Pro 4 is Keith McMillen Instruments’ patented Smart Sensor Fabric
technology
that is at the core of all of the company’s cutting-edge MIDI control
surfaces, making it immediately playable while providing
an expanded range of possible expression. Each key independently outputs
touch-sensitive XYZ data that can be mapped to any
parameter, such as vibrato, brightness, or timbre, allowing users to
play expressively in realtime with the nuance more routinely expected
from an acoustic instrument. Furthermore, four touch-sensitive sliders
can be mapped to anything, providing rapid access to parameters
such as octave, vibrato depth, or preset to keep performers playing
without interrupting their creative flow.

Future-proofing music performance, K-Board Pro 4’s silicone keys’ resilience, durable aluminium frame construction, and no moving parts
partnership ensures that trademark durability for which Keith McMillen Instruments is
held in such high regard worldwide, while the truly
desirable device itself is USB (Universal Serial Bus) powered and class
compliant to ensure both portability and compatibility with Mac OS,
Windows, iOS, and Android, as well as MIDI-capable hardware.

Having
already put highly-functional prototypes in the hands of professional
keyboard players and received an abundance of feedback that
has helped Keith McMillen Instruments dial
in the final design, quite how long supportive purchasers might have to
wait to get their eager
hands on a production model is dependent on the outcome of this
Kickstarter campaign, though if all goes to plan — scaling up working
prototype units to full production, paying for tooling, materials, and
assembly in large quantities — then estimated delivery is September
2017.
Keith McMillen himself is highly confident, concluding, “Our recent campaign for the BopPad Smart Fabric Drum was
a huge success because
of the support of the Kickstarter community. There really is no better
place for a small company to launch a new idea than on this platform.”

Playing K-Board Pro 4 is like playing no other instrument on earth... just ask Jaron Lanier — himself no stranger to innovation as an American
computer philosophy writer, computer scientist, classical composer, visual artist, and virtual reality pioneer par excellence! Explore and support the Kickstarter campaign for Keith McMillen Instruments’ K-Board Pro 4 project here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kmi/k-board-pro-4-smart-fabric-keyboard

About KMI (www.keithmcmillen.com)
Keith McMillen Instruments develops innovative hardware and software technologies that allow musicians to interface
with computers in exciting new ways. Based in Berkeley, California, its products provide today’s musician with the tools needed
to bring new dimensions of expression and control to their performance. The company collectively believes that when a
computer is played as a musical instrument it should feel and respond like one — with all the nuance and sensitivity that
makes an instrument musical.